Blog Review:Science in the Open

The blog reviewed here is ‘Science in the Open’ which can be found here.

Appearance and Design

There is a striped cyan background with a central white background for the articles and the side-pane. The title pane consists of a background of interlocked green and blue arms – most likely an analogy to the nature of the open science. On the right-hand pane, there are links to recent posts and recent comments as well as an RSS feed, an About section. The blog content is also marked as Creative Commons, which is in keeping with the spirit of an open science collaborative. The blog must be navigated by moving to the foot of the page and clicking back on older entries on each successive page.

Content

Here are a few of the articles I found interesting. The first article is dated August 13th 2007 and looks at what terms such as Open Access means:-

‘Open Access (of journals, data, or anything else really): Means freely available and accesible to use, re-use, re-distribute, re-mix subject only to a requirement to attribute the work. Essentially as described in the Berlin and Bethesda declarations’

Some current policies on open science are covered in this post.and further developments are discussed in this post. In this post, there is a call for open science collaboration on a chemistry experiment and I thought there was an interesting comment here about the concerns of valuable data being released in an open source environment. Concerns such as these will have to be addressed in making open science a successful reality. There is an interesting post here on open science in the developing countries. New ways of doing science are discussed in this post and the dangers of communities reinforcing their prejudices and thus interfering with a progress towards an open science are discussed here. Notes from a conference – Scifoo on open science were interesting. New technologies are covered including Google Wave and a focus on the Wave Robot here.

Conclusions

This blog about open-science is filled with insights and the posts are intelligently written and original. A number of the posts are very technical involving chemistry, specific software or some knowledge of computer programming. However these are balanced with the other articles giving a broader perspective on Open Science. The reader with an interest in the future of science in the 21st century would benefit from paying close attention to this blog and it compliments other blogs reviewed here (e.g see this review).

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Disclaimer

The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.